Hide and seek

Today I got to play Hide and Seek with the Amazon delivery person but I won the game.  They just got the wrong apartment door but got to the backside of the building.  I was at the computer when I saw the delivery email and hmmm… that’s not a photo of packages outside my door but it looked familiar.  I opened the door and yes, they were at my neighbor’s door so packages retrieved even tho I always feel like a criminal when I go retrieve MY packages from someone else’s door.

Now as you knew I would, I pulled the flosses for The Mighty Acorn chart.   And it was very quick to do since I had just put all the hand dyed flosses back in order on their rings.  There’s lots of shades of browns in this.  Like I thought, my floss for the house was too brownish compare to the golden look in the photo which is not uncommon when using hand dyed flosses and dye lots changing over time)  but I decided to change it to a totally different color rather than just a brighter gold/mustardy color.  Part of the reason for that decision was I have the bright yellowy/gold house I did in Winter Rose Manor, and I have a Notforgotten Farm book that has a chart for a great mustardy colored house and I think one other chart with a similar color.  So for this one I decided to make my house a dark purple.  It’s a  bit darker than it shows up in the photo but it has nice shading in it so I will be interested to see how it stitches up in a bigger area since I’ve only used it in smaller sections. I also didn’t have two of the other reddish orange colors so found two to substitute for those that are a bit brighter and also did pull a favorite gold color – WDW Whiskey – that I may add in here or there.  I like bolder fall colors.

I originally pulled the light tan fabric on the right but then spotted the Dried Sage on left – it has more greenish tone than it is showing in the photo.  I’ve been wanting to use that fabric for a while since it’s such a pretty shade and of course it’s my favorite aida to stitch on – To Dye For Fabrics hand-dyed 18 count.   Since I’m not doing the official SAL, I may just need to put a few stitches in this later today.

A few questions answered

I previously posted photos of my start on Miss Bingley’s Library and said I was going to be making some changes and would tell you about them later.  A reader emailed me she was starting the same chart soon and was curious as to what changes I was making. So here they are – and the changes are all due just to my personal preferences.

But first, a couple people had emailed me that when photos show up in this sort of collage format they have a hard time seeing some of them.  All you have to do is click on a photo in the collage and it will open up in a larger format (unless WordPress is not being cooperative at that particular moment).  Likewise if you go to the 2022 Cross Stitchy Stuff button at the top of the blog where I show the finished stitches for this year in a collage format, you can click on any of those as well to open into a larger format and also put your cursor over a particular image and it will give you the name of the chart.  So if you click on the photo of the chart above it should open a larger image  of it.

Okay – as for Miss Bingley, the changes I’m making so far are:  a color change to the pot on top of the house.  The color of the pot is too similar to the roof color for my tastes.   And after I fill in all that roof area I have outlined, I don’t really want to be stitching a color that looks really similar to the roof on top of that.  So I changed that to a dark blue that would play nicely with the other blue in the chart.  I’m also going to change the way the words are aligned.  Would anyone who appreciates an “excellent library” split the word excellent between two lines of text the way it is charted?  I don’t think so.  🙂  I’m going to enter the  middle line of text and move “excellent” to the bottom line and leave off the date. Also changing the British flag to US (tho it’s a small flag so it will only give the impression of being a US flag since I won’t be able to add all the stripes or stars, etc.)   I also think I will be able to use a standard size frame with this based on the fabric I used and the stitch count but would need to fill in a little extra space so the unstitched area wouldn’t be so wide between stitch and frame edge so I plan to use the idea of the books that are stacked up on the roof and that Miss Bingley is standing on and make a row of books across the bottom  below the words of all different size/color books.    So those are my planned changes – at least as of this moment.

I also got a question after I posted the floss photo for this project as to what the card on my floss ring is since it doesn’t have floss attached to it.  Many shops/designers will include a card similar to that with one of their designs on it when you order from them.  That’s where that card came from and it can be used as a floss drop but I use those individual ones to write the name of the chart the floss ring belongs with on the back in pencil.  I sometimes have a couple floss rings sitting on my table or basket that  “someone” didn’t put back in the project bag and that way I can easily identify what project it belongs to.

And yet another question I got was how I decide what to add to a design if I need to add a border to make it fit better in a certain frame and how I make it fit (figure out spacing/corners).  Mostly I just wing it.  It’s only stitches and they can be taken back out if it doesn’t work (I’m very practiced at taking stitches out).   So far I haven’t actually charted on graph paper the borders I add; I just start stitching them and if I can get a quarter section to work out the way I like then just repeat that in each quarter section.  On the Hollyhocks project I showed a few days ago I just went back to the book  that chart came from and looked at the other companion designs in it and picked part of a border from other design to add just along the bottom so didn’t have to worry about corners.  (before additional and after photo below)

Garden Friends – – Blackbird Designs Sewing Cub – 2021

For my Quaker Redbird (Quaker Crow Chart), I just wanted somewhat simple lines in red and black which will go with the frame I picked which is black with red lines in it, but I wanted to mimic some of the angles used in the bird design so what’s where my idea came for that one. I started in the center bottom and worked towards lower right corner with the red triangles, then started in right middle and worked down to lower right corner stitching those same triangles, and then figured out if the corner would fit in at an angle, etc.  I just sort of stitched it (and ripped a bit) to get the corner angle right.  After getting the right bottom and lower right side to look the way I wanted, I just repeated that in mirror images where necessary for the other three corners.

Quaker Crow -4-2-22

For Home for the Holidays, I  pulled out the Brenda Keyes Ultimate Sampler Motif Source Book and looked thru the border designs in that and pulled just part of the design from a border in there.  The original design, the loops were spaced a bit more apart (it had 5 stitches in the lower middle straight section between loops and I used 4 stitches there because it was easier to use an even number there to get it centered) and it had a little flower in the space between each loop that I left out.   The loops looked like ribbon to me so I thought it would go well.

You can see the red basting lines – I measured against the frame and then measured on my project to get the outside edge of where I would want the stitching to end – not to go beyond that point – which still leaves a small area of unstitched space between where my stitching ends and where the frame edge begins.  I also marked the center points top, bottom and sides.  Since the middle of the lower arc is now 4 stitches, I started with 2 of those 4 stitches on the lower right side of my center line and stitched the loops towards the right corner.  When there wasn’t enough space to add another loop, I then started the same process at the center right line stitching the border repeat three times and then just figured out what would make a corner look nice.   This is not a square design -it is a little longer top to bottom than across width – so there are a few more stitches in the side edges before starting the straight corner edge but because all four corners will look exactly the same it all works.

And speaking of frames, I got notice this morning that 3 of my 8 frames are finished (lickety-split) and should arrive Thursday.  One of those is for the Quaker Redbird so I can’t wait to see how it looks together.

Now my decision is do I start another project or not.  I do like having projects to hop back and forth in but how many is too many.  I haven’t decided that yet.  Friend Judy will be starting Mighty Acorn from the Winds of Autumn Blackbird Designs book with some others as a SAL in May.  While I wouldn’t be doing the official SAL (it’s an Instagram thing and I don’t do Instagram), I have wanted to start that one ever since I got the book and I can follow along on Judy’s progress and watch the progress of at least one of the SAL organizers on Flosstube.  So I may pull the book out and see what I have in the called-for flosses.  If I would do it on 18 count, the stitched area would measure 6-5/8″ x 10-1/4″ so not huge but it’s rather stitch intensive so I don’t think it will be a quick stitch but it will be a fun one.  Fall is my favorite season, favorite colors, I love anything with acorns on it plus  fun little squirrels – yes it ticks all the boxes for me.  And it has a great house although I don’t think the called-for color for the house in my stash is as gold/mustard as it appears in the chart (more brown)  so I may need to swap that color out – so yes, by the time I finished typing this paragraph I clearly have convinced myself that I need to start working on this chart. 🙂